McLaren and Bavasi Coming Back for 2008

Well if you haven't already heard it was announced before last night's win that McLaren and Bavasi will be back to give it another go in 2008. I agree with bringing Bavasi back. As much as the entire Mariner Nation has criticized some of the bad decisions he has made, he has made enough good decisions to put a winning team on the field this year. Let's face it, no Mariner fan who follows the team closely expected this team to have 85 wins heading into the final series of the year. Yeah, we're not going to make the playoffs but we've improved our record for the third straight season under Bavasi and have a solid core of players coming back next year that should keep us in the playoff hunt again. While Bavasi hasn't made all the right decisions, he's certainly done well enough to earn himself another year to try and put a team on the field that will make the playoffs.

Now, as far a bringing McLaren back, I gotta wholeheartedly disagree with this move. Yes, McLaren was put in a tough situation when Hargrove "retired" suddenly in the middle of the season. He even kept us in realistic contention through August. You really can't complain about a 40-41 record from a first time manager who took over unexpectedly. However, you can complain about how McLaren has repeatedly proven over the last 81 games that he lacks the ability to make competent decisions in critical game situations. I think Jeff over at Lookout Landing may have put it best when he said that managers rarely get fired for the decisions they make from the dugout, instead it's when they can't run the clubhouse when they get the boot most often. McLaren keeps the clubhouse and Ichiro happy, which is about as good as it seems to get in the Mariner's eyes.

While I understand why McLaren is getting a chance to come back, that isn't going to stop me from complaining about why it is a bad move. McLaren is a 56 year old rookie manager and I think he has shown why he has never gotten a shot to run the show until now. He simply cannot do the little things that keeps a team in contention by helping them win ballgames in critical situations.

He fails to take advantage of lefty vs. righty situations by pinch-hitting late in games claiming that he "doesn't buy too much into whole lefty vs. righty thing". However, on the otherside of the ball he repeatedly takes advantage of lefty vs. lefty (and vice versa) matchups by making far too many bullpen moves. You simply don't need to change pitchers every other batter to match up lefty vs lefty and righty vs. righty at all times. It'll wear your bullpen down, and it certainly wore the Mariner's bullpen out (our starting pitching is partly to blame for this but if McLaren didn't use 7 pitchers every game our great bullpen wouldn't look so ragged right now).

McLaren also seems to be a HUGE believer in toeing the line when it comes to toying with team chemistry. He seems to think our veterans have no backbone at all to stand upon and fails to toy with lineups because of this. Rather than putting the lineup that matches up the best and gives us the best chance to win McLaren would run out the same lineup game after game after game so our "chemistry" wasn't affected. This hurt us for two reasons. The first being that he stuck with Richie Sexson entirely too long this season. Richie was doing terrible, yet, as a veteran, McLaren marched him out there everyday in hopes that he would snap out of it, all the while Broussard sat on the bench rotting away after repeatedly proving he could perform this year.

The second reason this hurt us is because McLaren failed to take advantage of all the young players, including Adam Jones, who came up in late in the season. It was questionable bringing all these guys up, and most of them probably won't have a regular spot on the Mariner roster anytime soon, but if anything they weren't going to do any worse than the regulars during our late season struggles.

First of all Adam Jones could've been worked into the lineup atleast 4 to 5 days a week without drastically cutting into anyone's playing time. It's called giving guys regular rests and most teams do it. There is no reason why Ibanez and Guillen couldn't have gotten a rest about once a week to give Jones a chance to play. Work in DHing Ibanez twice a week (with Vidro starting at 2B one of the games and resting the other) and you get 4 starts a week for Jones and all the veterans should be fresh and happy. The situation with Adam Jones just wasn't as hard as McLaren made it seem. Most of the last two months was wasted for AJ and his great season at AAA seemed to go by the wayside. By the way, take note of the above scenario for next year McLaren, it'll do wonders if you are faced with the same situation for AN ENTIRE YEAR.

Second of all we haven't realistically been in the playoff race for the last two weeks, and playing the young guys more isn't going to hurt anything (not even the team chemistry, if the vets can't deal with the young guys playing late in the season than they shouldn't be on a major league roster). If playing the young guys more would have done anything it would have gave them a chance to showcase their talents to other teams for potential trades. Let's face it, a majority of the young guys who are up with the big club right now don't fit into the big picture too well and the best value they are to the Mariners is as trade bait. If players like Jeff Clement, Jeremy Reed, Wladimir Balentien and Mike Morse would've got a little more time on the field late in the season they may have become more attractive to a team who might be willing to send us a quality starting pitcher. I'm not saying play all of them every day but three of them every game for the last three weeks of the season would've utilized them much better and might've brought better value for these players in any potential trades this offseason.

I'm a big believer that any person can learn and become better at things with time. Hopefully McLaren has learned alot in his 84 games this year as a MLB manager and will take what he has learned into next year. If he does, he might not be as bad a manager as I percieve him at this moment. However, if he doesn't learn from the mistakes that he has made this season, I may die of blunt force trauma to the head by the All-Star break from banging my head repeatedly into the wall watching McLaren make decisions on-par with those that a volunteer little league manager would make.